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Articles from 2013
Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
2013 Spelling Bee: 42 Make it Through Vocabulary-Infused Preliminaries
Two hundred eighty-one young contestants took on the new-and-improved preliminaries of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which for the first time included questions about words' definitions along with their spellings. After the dust had cleared, 42 of them managed to make it to Thursday's semifinals.
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Vocabulary Shout-Out: William Styron for "Malingerer"
Ten vocabulary words in a single sentence!
The title character in William Styron's novel The Confessions of Nat Turner uses words with Biblical heft; so many times, in fact, we were able to create a Vocabulary List from one sentence alone.
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Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
2013 Spelling Bee: Vocabulary Questions in the Spotlight
It's time once again for the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and the big news going into this year's competition is the inclusion of vocabulary questions along with the traditional spelling questions. Even though the new multiple-choice questions testing contestants' knowledge of definitions will only appear in the off-stage computerized portions of the Bee, it's still a controversial shift in format.
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When Snoopy takes out his typewriter and begins to compose a novel atop his doghouse, he always begins with "It was a dark and stormy night..." This phrase — originally appearing in a schmaltzy 19th century British novel — has come to symbolize all that can go wrong with melodramatic writing, especially the clumsy attempts of a writer trying to evoke a dramatic setting within the first sentence of a work of literature.
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Ten Words from "The NY Times" - May 29, 2013
Ten Words from "The NY Times" - May 29, 2013
Learn Ten Words from The NY Times - May 29, 2013. Then see "Vocabulary Begets Vocabulary: The More You Know, the More You Learn" to understand why learning these words will help you absorb even more as you read.
Lists featured on Vocabulary.com were created or vetted by the Vocabulary.com curriculum development team to meet a certain standard of list quality. Here's six steps to making your own lists ready to share.
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"Lean in," thanks to the title of a new book by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, has become "the idiom of the moment," Motoko Rich writes in the New York Times, adding "the phrase seems to have taken on a life of its own." But where did all of this "leaning in" come from?
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